uKeying: A Key Management Framework for Wireless Sensor Networks Utilizing a Unique Session Key

Key management is a core mechanism to ensure the security of applications and network services in wireless sensor networks. Key management includes two aspects: key distribution and key revocation. The goal of the key distribution is to establish the required keys between sensor nodes which must exchange data. Key revocation is used to remove compromised sensor nodes from the network. Although many key distribution schemes and key revocation schemes have been proposed in the literature, there is a lack of a framework which can integrate the schemes. In this paper, the authors propose a key management framework, uKeying, for wireless sensor networks using a globally distributed session key.